


Lions

by zihna



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Gore, Implied Character Death, Implied Relationships, Implied Violence, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, Journalism, Language, Speculation, World War Z - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 19:57:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zihna/pseuds/zihna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[<i>Red Zone GA, Section 32, Area 81; The “Lion’s Den.” </i></p><p>  <i>Reporter #14</i></p><p>  <i>Status: Complete</i></p><p>  <i>Interviewees: Rhee, Maggie; Dixon, Daryl; Milton, E; Grimes, Carl; Grimes, Judith</i>]</p><p> </p><p>Or, The Walking Dead twenty-five years into the future, World War Z style.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> First, huge thanks to twizzler for being her wonderful, wonderful self and cheerleading and editing like a boss. Huge thanks to Kate as well, for providing ideas and cheerleading and general awesomeness :)
> 
> Second, this work was inspired by the amazing zombie-apocalypse novel _World War Z_ by Max Brooks. It's a fascinating book that (using interviewer/interviewee format) breaks down that particular apocalypse and the psychology behind it. It's worth a read or six :D
> 
> This project was born out of that idea--assuming humanity survives the apocalypse, what will it look like? Who will still be alive? Who will have passed on? What kind of stories will people tell each other? What have they done to survive?

[ _Red Zone GA, Section 32, Area 81; The “Lion’s Den.”_

_Reporter #14_

_Status: Complete_

_APPROVED by Maria de los Santos, Secretary of History, NUSA_ ]

Introduction

In prewar books, this would be called _the prologue._ I only know this because one of the older women in my town used to be an editor, and she has been very excited about this project. 

The book that I am writing—helping to write, actually, I’m just one of twenty-six contributors—will be the first book officially published since the end of the war.  It was commissioned by the Cabinet of the New United States of America for the purpose of going out into our new, reshaped country and recording the legends we find. 

The purpose of this book is not to twist the stories of the people or to gather evidence to prosecute anyone inside or outside of the territories of the State.  Likewise the purpose of this book is not to collect information on the territories beyond the state—the Republic of Texas, the Bear Kingdom, or the wild South—so that they can be “recolonized,” I think the fear is, but only to find stories and put them in one place.

The Secretary of History met with all of us “journalists”—I use the term loosely, because I proudly told the old editor that I was one and she laughed so hard she nearly cried—personally and told us that humanity needs its legends.  There are other, perhaps more qualified, “journalists” going out into the world to collect hard facts, the death tolls and the sources of the original infection, the falls of cities and the tactics used to survive.

These journalists, who are almost all older people, who were in school during the Turning, studying to be journalists and newscasters and editors, are doing the government a great service, but no one cares about their work.  That’s what the Secretary of History said.  No one cares about the statistics.  It’s too late to care about where the infection started.  Death tolls just make people sad.

That book will never be widely published.  I’m sure the Cabinet will print a few hundred copies, send them off to leaders and doctors and to every town’s Hall of Records, but the public, the hundred million Americans who survived the war, will never see it.  The public doesn’t want to see it.

People want their legends, the Secretary said.  People want stories.  They want history, but they want a better version of it, a version with heroes they can root for, villains they can despise, an enemy they can band together against.  They want the stories that we lost when cities started burning, the kinds of stories that used to fill up libraries, which most people alive today have never seen, or just dimly remember. 

I don’t know if such a history can be found, anymore.  When I was a little girl my parents told me stories of princesses and knights and dragons, and in them the dragon always stole the princess and the knight always rescued her (unless the princess rescued herself, which sometimes happened, confusing and arousing the good knight).  Good and evil were clear-cut and easy to understand. 

If my parents had been killed by the Unconsecrated, maybe I would still have that child-like faith that good was good and evil was evil.  It’s easy to paint the dead as the villain of this story.  After all, it was their rising that started the whole war.  If not for them, I and billions of other children would have grown up normally.  I would have grown up both parents and a nice house, maybe a dog.  I would have gone to school and graduated college and gotten a job.  I might have even been a journalist. 

But, well.  Everyone knows how _that_ story goes, and my parents were not killed by the Unconsecrated.

I don’t know if the men who killed my parents were good or evil—I don’t remember that night very well.  I was young, and people say that we block out what hurts us, now more than ever.  Survival mechanisms, I guess.  I don’t know what those men wanted from parents.  Food, probably, like everyone else, or gas, or water.  Maybe they were like us, desperate and starving, or maybe they just wanted to kill something that hadn’t already died.  Maybe they were good people, maybe they were bad, I’ll never know. 

I don’t think it matters much anymore.  If you ask any child on the street, they’re going to tell you that sometimes good people do bad things, and sometimes bad people are very, very nice.  We don’t have good and evil anymore.  Every hero has a dark side.  Every villain has a moment of redemption.

Maybe that’s a little hard to hear.  Postwar children have no problem understanding this morality—it’s the world they were born into, after all—and I was young enough at the Turning to learn the ways of the new world quickly.

But the old ones, our veterans, our leaders and soldiers and parents and even our Secretaries, hang on to the old ways.  That’s why this whole project was started, to give people villains to hate, heroes to worship, spots of light in the dark that swallowed us up for twenty-five years. 

I don’t know how successful I’ll be.  For one thing I’m not a journalist—I’m just a girl who likes writing stories, and who just so happens to be the Secretary of History’s adopted daughter.  My assignment is also to the South.  While the North was protected by seven months of winter that first year, the South was left open.  The South died quickly.  Until a few years ago, our Cabinet didn’t even think that anyone was down there, and if there were people still alive, they were just little colonies, soon to be wiped out.     

We know now that that is a lie, but we still don’t necessarily know what’s down there, even though some stories have reached my mother through her growing network of journalists.  Atlanta went early, before even New York City, but according to some of these journalists, people still live there.  The area around the city still belongs to the dead, but groups of survivors have carved out a life for themselves. 

They have heroes and villains that we’ve never heard of.  At least, that’s what we’ve been promised.  Personally, I don’t think any of this is as clear-cut as our Cabinet thinks it is, but my mother does have a point, when she says that everyone wants stories. 

Stories make us feel better, I think.  They give us something to hold on to.  Something to fight for, my mother always said. 

In prewar books, this would be called the prologue.  According to the editor in my town, _prologue_ meant _the beginning,_ the introduction to a story.  Each of us was told to write one to introduce our legend—the name of the town, of the survivors, the hero or villain we’re recording—but I’m in a bit of a different  situation. I know almost nothing about where I’m going, except that the locals call it the Lion’s Den, or who I’m writing about, except they call him the Lionheart.

So this isn’t much of a beginning, I know.  You probably don’t want to read a thirty-something’s ramblings about what the world was and is and the people in it.  I know I wouldn’t.  You just want stories. 

I’m new at this.  I’m trying. 

Bear with me. 


	2. 1. Maggie Rhee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as an overall note: this story isn't going to be canon-compliant at all. I know that the Governor drove Rick's people out of the prison a long time ago, and that a _lot_ of characters died, but for the sake of this we're going to pretend they stayed! 
> 
> Also, this is also the project where I am a huge history nerd and couldn't resist the temptation of "Rick the Lionheart" because history feels.
> 
> Quick reading key:   
> **Bold text is the interviewer asking a question outloud.**   
>  Normal text is the interviewee's spoken answer.   
> [ _Brackets and italics denote the interviewer's unspoken thoughts and observations._ ]

1\. Maggie Rhee

 

[ _I have never been this far south before.  Even before the Turning I never left my little neighborhood in Old New Hampshire, and since then I haven’t really had the opportunity.  I was one of the lucky ones—when my parents died, there were people close by who took me in, and we were able to find a place to settle fairly quickly, thanks to the Long Winter.  We were able to hold our place and survive._

_While my story is common in the North, farther south government-protected havens are almost non-existent.  Once the original refugee camps and FEMA stations fell, nothing lower than Raleigh received any government aid.  It was simply impossible._

_When the Reconstruction began ten years ago, we were told that no one on the far side of the Carolinas could have made it.  Twenty-five years of war was just too much, they said.  Surely the South has fallen._

_Driving through the gutted wasteland, I am inclined to believe them.  There is nothing here.  Cities are empty, broken down, and houses are overgrown.  If any still stand they are covered in dust and ivy.  Most have crumbled in on themselves, or burned to the ground.  Every now and then an old Unconsecrated comes stumbling out from the wreckage, grasping at us._

_I haven’t seen one in four years, but I remember them.  My body remembers them.  As we drive through the ruins of Georgia, my fingers itch for my bow._

_At first glance, it is easy to dismiss this sad place.  The government nearly did.  All the great Southern cities fell early on.  The rest of the South must have gone under soon after._

_Except it didn’t._

_As we get closer and closer to our destination, I can see signs of civilization.  The fence, twelve feet tall and topped with chicken wire, is just as imposing as ours is back home.  We are stopped at a checkpoint by an old, lean man with shaggy gray hair and a crossbow slung over his shoulder._

_My driver greets him.  He grunts, and doesn’t respond._

_We are allowed through, though.  Once inside the fence, the vital signs of civilization are easier to see.  Farmland stretches all the way around the fence, fields of corn and sugar cane and soy that have kept this group of people alive for a quarter of a century._

_As we get closer, the infamous Lion’s Den becomes visible, a great, ugly building crouched among rows and rows of barbed wire fencing.  According to legend, before the Turning the Lion’s Den was a prison.  That’s not hard to imagine.  The Lion’s Den might be a safe haven now, but it certainly doesn’t look friendly._

_At the gate, my driver and I are asked to leave our cars and taken into a small, dark room.  Here we are stripped and searched for bites and scratches._

_In the North, this is an ancient practice, and mostly forgotten.  Down here, though,_ better safe than sorry _seems to be the watchword._ ]

**Do you get many infections?**

[ _The young woman who is examining looks up, her eyes bright.  She has blonde hair that reminds me of my mother’s.  I don’t think she knows if she’s allowed to talk to me.  I smile at her, and nervously, she smiles back._ ]

Not really.  It’s been a long time.  But we can’t be too careful, you know?

**Do you get many visitors?**

Nope.  We’ve got most everyone who lives in the area already, and people don’t come around much.  They’re scared of us.

[ _She sounds almost proud of the fact.  That fear is the reason I’m down here, of course.  The rumors of the Lion’s Den reached the North last year, along with the first trickle of refugees.  Everyone has said the same thing of the Lion’s Den;_ stay away.  Here, there be monsters.

_The young woman leads me through the compound.  The walls are brightly colored, but it’s easy to see that once they weren’t.  I doubt that I’ll be allowed to explore the Lion’s Den, but it seems like an interesting place.  Most of the doors are locked, however, and every now and then an armed man or woman scowls at me._

_Finally, the young woman drops me off at a closed door, smiles, and waves goodbye._

_I knock._ ]

You’re the Northerner, I take it?

[ _The woman who answers the door is younger than she looks.  The world after the Turn has a way of doing that to you.  I am maybe thirty, but I look forty.  She looks to be about sixty, her hair silvered, her face weathered, but her eyes are bright and her step is strong._ ]

**I am.  Are you Maggie Rhee?**

I am. 

**It’s nice to meet you.**

[ _She takes my hand and offers me a seat.  This room is small, but warm.  There is a gun on the corner of a rough desk.  I’m going to guess it’s not the only weapon in the room._ ]

So, you said in your letters that you wanted to ask me some questions? 

**Yes.**

What for?

**The government of the North commissioned a book of stories.  They want to hear the legends of survivors, and share them with the rest of the world.**

 [ _She laughs._ ]  Oh, that’s a good one.  It’s nice to see that the government hasn’t changed.  Honestly we thought y’all’d died up there, or at least gotten some sense, but no, you’re still the same.  So even the US government wants to hear our old legend?

**What legend do you mean?**

You know, _the_ story.  The Lion’s Den, isn’t that what everyone wants to know?

**People ask about it often?**

Whenever we get guests.  We’re pretty famous, you know.  Everybody wants to know if we’re going to eat ‘em or not.  

**And do you?**

[ _I am kidding, of course—the government would never send me down here with cannibals.  She shows me all of her teeth._ ]

Nah, not any more.  Gettin’ too old for it, I guess.  We don’t have too many people left down here to cause us problems.  Truth behind the legend, you know.  I bet you’ve been hearing a lot of legends.

**Some.**

Whatever you’ve heard, we’re a peaceful people, mostly.  We’ve done our share of fighting and if we’re attacked, we’ll hit back, but we haven’t had reason to go to war in years now.  So what all do you want to know?

[ _I want to know everything—the legend of the Lion’s Den, and its infamous leader, fascinate me.  It sounds so different from our home in the North.  It sounds almost like a fairytale._ ]

**Why don’t you start from the beginning?  I want to hear everything you have to say.**

Okay, sounds easy.  [ _She pauses, eyes closed, searching for a place to begin._ ]

I guess—I guess that the story starts for me the day Otis shot Carl.  That’s what brought Rick and his people to us.  My family and I were out of the way of the whole thing before that.  We’d lost a few people to the infection—my mom, my brother, some friends and neighbors—but we were alright, mostly.  We were out of the way and we were just gonna wait it out. 

And then Otis, one of ours, shot Carl.  Rick showed up at our doorstep, begging for my dad’s help—he was a vet, before it all started—and the rest of the group came on his heels soon after. 

**And you just let them come?  A bunch of outsiders?**

We couldn’t say no to Rick, not with his little boy shot.  Dad wanted them gone, after Carl had healed up but Rick, he didn’t want to go.  His wife was pregnant and his people were tired and scared.  He was looking for a place to hole up and wait it out.  That was the thing about Rick—he was always looking for a safe place.  For heaven, my dad used to say. 

After a while, Rick and Dad worked things out.  They were allowed to stay, and we thought—we thought that we could just live there, out of the way of everything, until the world got back on its feet.  Crazy, right? 

We lived together on that farm for maybe a month before a herd came through, maybe a hundred and fifty, two hundred head.  We’ve seen bigger herds since then, but at the time, it was the most walkers I’d ever seen. 

We panicked, lost a few people, and I haven’t seen that old farmhouse since. 

That winter—the first winter, I guess—was the hardest.  We didn’t have a home.  We drifted from place to place, always running, always hungry, and it _changed_ us.  I don’t know what it was like in the North, but down here it was tribal warfare.  If the walkers weren’t after you there was another group, wanting your food or your ammo or your women. 

[ _She pauses, her eyes old and distant._ ]

We had to—we had to become things that we’d never thought we’d become.  I used to think that I was going to graduate college and live a normal life, you know?  I used to want to be a vet, like my dad, but my first year of college I found out that I couldn’t stand the sight of blood.  It freaked me out, you know?  So I was going to become an actuary instead.   

[ _She laughs, bitterly._ ]

I killed three people that winter, two outsiders who ambushed me and Glenn when we were running for supplies and one man who was trying to rape my little sister.  We even took another group’s food once, down to the last can of spam.  I never saw them again.  I don’t know if they starved or became what we became.

**What did you become?**

I don’t know.  Not murderers, but thieves, maybe.  Rick called us survivors.  And we were.  We survived eight months like that, always running, always on the lookout for walkers or our next meal.  We only lived because of each other, I think. 

**What do you mean by that?**

We grew together, that long winter.  Rick’s people became _our_ people.  We were a family.  We took care of each other.  By the time we found this place we were inseparable—I couldn’t imagine living without them.   I would have died for any one of them, and they would have died for me. 

That’s the only reason we followed Rick into the prison, I think.  When he and Daryl showed it to us, it was a madhouse.  There were walkers everywhere, hundreds of ‘em, and you could tell that they hadn’t had a good meal in months.  The second they smelled us they were at the fences, rattling them so hard I thought they were gonna fall over.  If it was up to any of the rest of us, we would’ve just moved on and left this place to the walkers.

But Rick, he saw something in here.  I don’t know what it was—Dad used to say that it was the hand of God, if you still believe in that sort of thing—but he thought that we could live here, at least for a little while. 

So he pushed us, and we took the prison by sections.

**Rick was your leader?**

Yeah.  Best damn leader we’ve ever had, but don’t tell Carl.  Rick was—well.  He was Rick.  Crazy son of a bitch, ‘specially as the years went on, but he meant well, and he took care of us. 

**How did he become your leader?**

I don’t know.  When he came to our farm he was already the leader of the group, and as my family grew closer to his, we just accepted him as our leader too. He had this _feeling_ around him, I guess.  Charisma, whatever.  When he spoke, you wanted to listen. 

That’s why we trusted him, when he said that we would take the prison.  I thought it was impossible.  But it wasn’t.

**Did you lose anyone?**

Not when we first took it.  We were ready for the dead then, and driven by desperation.  We hadn’t had a good meal in weeks and we knew that if we didn’t take the prison we’d die.  We were able to clear the yard first, and then Cell Block C the next day.  The rest of the prison we took in sections, as we needed to. 

**But you did lose people.**

[ _She pauses._ ]

Yes.  We lost—we lost a good friend when the prison was overrun again—sabotage from an outsider—and Rick’s wife died that day too.  We learned to be careful.  All the doors were locked differently from then on, with actual keys instead of the prison’s electronic system.

**But you still let outsiders into your group?**

Sometimes.  Usually we let people rest here for a day or two, in different parts of the prison—as many locked doors away from us as we could put ‘em, without throwing ‘em to the infested sections—and then sent ‘em on their way. 

Rick was really careful about that, you know.  When I first met him he was so different—he would’ve taken anyone in, anyone who needed his help.  After the Black Winter and the Woodbury War, though, it would take outsiders months to gain his, and our, trust.  Michonne had to literally save his neck before he’d let her into our cell block.  Same with Tyreese and his people.  

The problem was, the area around here wasn’t safe.  We weren’t the only group.  There were others, and a lot of them were even worse than we were.  Anyone who wasn’t part of their group was at best a potential prisoner and at worst walker bait.  The first few years we lived here, we fought off outsiders every other week.  Lost a lot of good people that way. After Merle anybody we saw, even loners, was a potential spy.  We dealt with them from the guard towers.

**What do you mean by “dealt with?”**

[ _She meets my eyes, unwavering._ ]

You must think we’re terrible people.  We did what we had to.  There was no way to know who was a spy and who was just a loner.  We figured that a year into the end of the world, most loners had died off or joined other groups, so that meant that everyone who came up to our gates, no matter what they said or did or brought, was a spy for someone else.

Rick didn’t want to kill anyone.  Hell, _I_ didn’t want to kill anyone.  But when it was our safety over theirs, we chose ours, and we made sure everyone knew that.  If we shot every spy they sent, then they would leave us alone. 

**So it was all military tactics.**

I guess you could call it that.  None of us were military, but sometimes we felt like soldiers.  That was the only way some of us coped, actually.  I got myself through that winter thinking like a solider—what can I do for my people, how can I best serve them, if I kill this man here what will that mean down the road—and after you start thinking like that, it’s hard to stop. 

It came in handy, though.  We fought the dead, but we were at war with the living.  Did you have rival groups, in the North?

**Some.  Not many—there were enough places to go, especially during the Long Winter, that people could have their own space.**

[ _She smiles bitterly._ ]

It wasn’t like that down here.  The farm was a good place for a while, but eventually it was overtaken, just like all the farms where I grew up.  The cities weren’t safe, and the herds would just turn in circles, wandering from place to place.  All up and down the highway you couldn’t find somewhere you could keep for longer than a few days.  There were just too many walkers. 

But there were a lot of survivors.  The Black Winter, mild as it was, was just cold enough to slow down the herds, so people got a break for a few months.  People got to hole up and get strong again. 

That wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that there were only a few good, truly safe places like this.  We had the prison—fences and doors with locks—and it was the safest getup within one, two hundred miles.  There were other little places, Woodbury for one, maybe a farm or two deep in the woods, but this, this was the best spot.

And everybody wanted a piece of it.

In the early days, we had to lock every door at night twice, once with the keys and once with bike lock or something, because people would slip in through the holes in the back and try and wipe us out. 

We also had to keep people in the watchtowers.  You ever sat up in a watchtower in the black of July?  It’s so dark you can barely see your own hand, and even the sound of walkers sounds like someone trying to slip in and cut your throat, cut your family’s.   

It got so bad that we thought of just packing up and moving on, leave the place where we’d spilled our blood and buried our people.  It was that bad.  The Governor—

[ _She stops again, looking away sharply.  Her old fingers curl and uncurl in her lap, whether from anger or fear or sadness I don’t know._ ]

The Governor didn’t help.  He did his damnedest to break us, came close to it too.  If Andrea hadn’t come back to our side—

[ _She takes another deep breath._ ]

But we stayed.  It hurt Rick, I think, to leave after everything we’d gone through.  Once he’d let Mich and Tyreese and his people in with us, and once Andrea had told us everything she knew about Woodbury, we took the fight to the Governor and convinced him to let us be, for a while. 

We stayed.  We got smarter, started being proactive.  Once the harvest came in we were strong enough to go out and chase away nearby groups.  We started keeping track of who settled nearby, along with all the walker herds.  If a group was significantly bigger than us—say, thirty people instead of fifteen—we drove them out. 

If they were smaller, families, mostly, or survivors who just had each other, we’d take them in.  Most were so grateful they’d do anything we asked, and Rick knew how to foster loyalty.  Within a few months it was like they’d never been outsiders at all. 

**And you used them?**

If by “used” you mean we had them work for their keep, yes, we did.  We couldn’t have anybody just sitting around—everybody had a job.  That’s how it worked, how it still works today.  People farmed or went on runs or hunted or watched the fence.  Everyone, except the really young, but even at seven kids were old enough to know how to do laundry or pick soy.   

We survived that way for a long time, just us against the walkers, against other groups.  The year after the Black Winter was hard, but by the time spring came again, there were fifty of us living here.   The spring after that, we had tripled in size.  By the fourth or fifth spring we had won the Woodbury War, and though we had lost so many people—

[ _She stops to play with a ring on her finger, a simple silver band turned brown at the edges.  She takes a deep breath, gathers herself, and goes on._ ]

—we’d gained some new people too.  That was around the time people started calling this place the Lion’s Den.  They’d been calling Rick the Lionheart for years, since the first time he took the war to Woodbury, but this old place had just been “the prison.”

**Why did people give it its name?**

Why the Lion’s Den?  Dad used to say it was because of the Book of Daniel. You know, the old Bible story.  No?  You might be too young—my dad’s particular brand of faith died out pretty quick.  Well, the story goes that there was this man, Daniel, a favorite of the king, who believed in God and prayed to him every day.  Daniel’s enemies convinced the king to pass a law in his kingdom that prohibited the worship of God, including prayer.  Breaking this law was punishable by death.  These men caught Daniel at prayer—he refused to give up his faith—and brought him before the king. 

The king, because he loved Daniel, could not bear to sentence him to death, but he also could not break his own decree and let Daniel live.  He ordered Daniel to be thrown into a den of lions.  If he emerged in the morning unscathed, he would be allowed to live. 

Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den, but his God was with him, and the lions became tame.  They didn’t hurt him.  When morning came, he was released and the men who had betrayed him were fed to the hungry lions instead. 

I guess people thought we were the lions.  Taking people of true faith into the fold, and eating all the rest.  Or maybe that Rick was like Daniel—he had found a safe place because of his faith.  Whatever the reason, the name stuck. 

**Was Rick like Daniel?**

[ _She laughs._ ]

God no.  My dad believed in God, but Rick—Rick, I’m not so sure about.  If he believed in God he never spoke about Him.  He was angry, I think.  We all were, but Rick was _angry._ He didn’t have any faith in him after the Black Winter.  The only thing he believed in was us. 

I don’t know why people starting calling him a Messiah.  He wasn’t.  You’ve probably heard some stories about our Lionheart, even up in the North.  He got pretty famous.  Eight or nine years into it we were getting refugees from as far away as Corpus Christi, can you believe that?  That’s _Texas,_ over a thousand miles away.  To this day I don’t know how they heard of us.  Word of mouth, I guess.  Camps like ours started trading with each other, once we felt safe again.  Our story was passed around like, like the Promised Land, and people just kept coming.

**Good people?**

Good and bad.  We had plenty of survivors who wanted to live with us.  We even let some of them stay, the ones with useful skills, with things to offer. 

But we also got raiders, nomads, some groups like Woodbury who thought we were a threat.   Rick earned his nickname pretty fast, let me tell you.  They called us lions and we were—we saved a few and destroyed the rest.

[ _Her eyes grow unfocused and she looks off to a point past my shoulder._ ]

There was this one group, maybe fifty people strong, who got through the first set of fences and met us in the yard.  That was a bloodbath.  We never found out where they came from—west, I think—but they must’ve brought every person they had, down to the kids.  The youngest was about five, my daughter’s age.  The oldest must’ve been seventy, how old my dad would’ve been if he’d still been alive. 

We killed them all. 

There was this one kid, maybe twenty, and oh how he looked like my late husband.   They could’ve been brothers.  I would’ve asked him what his last name was, if Glenn hadn’t already told me that he didn’t have any brothers.  My son grew up to look like this kid.

He had a homemade glaive, a machete tied to the top of a hockey stick, and he looked so much like Glenn that when he ran at me, I froze up.  He got that fucker into my shoulder, nice and deep. 

[ _She flexes her right hand._ ]

I would’ve died if it hadn’t been for Rick screaming my name, over the shouting and the hollering and the moans of the walkers at the fence.  I heard him screaming and I thought of my babies.  My children had already lost their daddy and granddaddy—they wouldn’t lose me too.

I damn near cut that kid in half.  I don’t remember it, really, but I remember swinging my machete, remember it passing through his belly.  I gutted that kid like a fish, just spilled his insides everywhere.

He didn’t die right away.  He kind of collapsed forward, onto his knees, and let go of his glaive.  He said something, “Please,” maybe, or “Oh.”  I couldn’t hear him.  He sat there in front of me trying to hold his guts in, and his eyes—

[ _She stops, violently._ ]                                                                                                                                 

Andrea saved my life that night.   She stood over me and killed anyone who came close until Daryl could get me out of there.  Rick took care of the rest.  My shoulder was nearly ruined.  I was laid up for months.  Fever, infection, blood poisoning, you name it, I got it. 

**But you lived.**

[ _She smiles, again._ ]

I lived.

[ _She nods at the wall behind me, where a battered, chipped hockey stick tied to a rusted blade is tacked to the concrete._ ]

I never asked Rick what he’d done to that kid.  It wasn’t Rick’s way to let someone suffer, even enemies, but that kid nearly killed me, and Rick was crazy protective of us, the original ones.  I was too sick to see what he’d done with the bodies, and by the time I had gotten better, all evidence of the attack was cleared away. 

But I hear stories.  Whispers.  No one ever told me what happened to that kid—Rick forbid it—but I did hear whispers of a boy tied to the front gates, his guts left hanging in the wind. 

**Like a warning.**

Did you know that lions will sometimes leave the bones of a kill lying around for other predators?  My sister loved Animal Planet—old TV channel—when we were little and they’d do these specials every now and then, showcasing different animals.  Lions were assholes.  These “trophy kills” would be a warning to other predators in the area, hyenas, other lions, you know.  They’d see the bones and know that there was a powerful pride in the area.  They would know to stay away.

[ _She looks over my shoulder again, her eyes going distant. She adjusts the ring on her left hand again, absently stroking the warm metal._ ]

I wish more people would’ve listened to that warning. 


	3. Milton Mamet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo, another chapter! This bit is from Milton's (sketchy-ass scientist from Woodbury) point of view, since I figure'd it would be cool to look into the other side of the conflict :D I have Daryl's "interview" mostly finished, I'm just polishing it up right now. 
> 
> Also, Milton doesn't have a first name in canon (I don't think) unless his first name is Milton, so for now he's just Milton, E. If he has a name, can somebody let me know? :D
> 
> Super thanks to twizzler for her very awesome and snarky beta! <3 And thank you to everyone who has read this already!

_2\. E. Milton_

[ _The man before me is old, nervous, and constantly in motion.  He does not live in the Lion’s Den but rather three miles outside of its gates, in a small, but well-fortified, hut.  I can only assume that it is self-sustaining, as we are sitting in a small garden._

 _As we sip tea, an Unconsecrated comes shambling by and slams itself up against the fence, snarling._ ]

**What was it like, living in Woodbury?**

Oh, you can’t even imagine it.  It was like it was Before, without the cars and the noise and the telemarketers calling every other hour.  It was blissful.  Woodbury was the perfect community—safe, well-protected, in a good spot.  The people were all polite and they gave you the respect you deserved.  They listened to you when you spoke.

Everyone had a purpose, too—there was none of that milling around being useless like Before, none of that scramble for power, for the biggest house or the prettiest girl or the best job.  Everyone knew their place.  Everyone knew what they were there for.

**And that was?**

Oh, this and that.  We had farmers, launderers, doctors and nurses, repairmen, electricians, engineers, janitors, maids, you know.  Who you would expect to survive the end of the world.  The Governor picked most of them himself specifically for their task, and then they took in young people and trained them to take their place. 

We had our warriors too—not a single soldier among them, but fighters.  I don’t know where the Governor found them, but they were a fierce bunch, always up on our wall, keeping the biters away.  We lost them first, once the fighting started.

**When the Woodbury War began?**

They call it the Woodbury War but it wasn’t, you know.  Not like we think of wars.  The whole biter mess, the cities falling, the death, the dying, that was a war.  But what happened between us and Rick Grimes’ people, that wasn’t a war. 

**What was it, then?**

It was a… a force of nature.  Like a hurricane or a forest fire.  It was physics too—an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.  If you’d known Grimes or the Governor, you would have understood.  Men like that don’t fight wars.  Men like that burn down everything around them.  It was, well.  It was rather magnificent, actually. 

**You’re calling the gross loss of human life on either side “magnificent?”**

You misunderstand.  What happened between our groups was a tragedy.  I lost many friends over the course of that year, and I’m sure Grimes’ people suffered too.  The aftermath was horrible.  You’ve seen the Lion’s Den—it can withstand anything—but have you seen Woodbury?  Before it was beautiful, a cute little town.  We didn’t have any ruined buildings or firebombed streets.  It had survived the early days somehow, and it looked just like a town from Before. 

But afterwards, there wasn’t much left.  Grimes’ people burned down our buildings, broke apart our wall.  They drove seventy people out into the wilderness and made sure they couldn’t possibly come back, left them out there in the wild to starve or worse, get eaten.  Not that I blame him, of course.  He did what he had to do, and when an unstoppable force and an immovable object collide, there’s always…collateral damage. 

**Which was Grimes?**

Excuse me?

**Which one was Grimes?  The immovable object or the unstoppable force?**

Oh, in this case he was the immovable object.  You couldn’t get him to abandon that old prison no matter how hard you tried, and believe me, the Governor tried _everything._ Spies on the inside, all-out assaults, starvation, herds of biters… You name it, the Governor tried it.

But Grimes wouldn’t budge.  Any other man would have taken his people and slipped away in the night.  But he _stayed,_ and more than that he fought back.  I would’ve loved to study him up close.  He earned his name, I think.  _Lionheart._ The Governor used to laugh whenever one of our people called Grimes that.

“He’s no lion,” he would say.  “He fights in the dark, when our backs are turned!  What kind of lion does that?”

I warned him, you know.  I told him to just let it go, let Grimes and his people have their prison.  This was before Woodbury fell, understand, right at the beginning of our conflict.  We outnumbered them four to one at the time.  Grimes wouldn’t attack us—he was too busy fighting off the biters within his own borders, too busy with infighting!  He wasn’t a threat!  Just let him be, I said.  Why waste our people trying to break down a prison door?

But the Governor didn’t listen to me.  No, he said, and sent Dixon into the prison to bring it down from the inside.

**Daryl Dixon?**

No, his older brother.  I’ve met both—Daryl is the nicer one.  Merle was…the Governor’s hunting dog, bloodthirsty and mean to the bone.  Stupid man, it’s amazing he survived until the end of the world, but vicious, and terrified of the Governor.  He’d do whatever he was told. 

He was with Grimes for two or three weeks, I think, feeding us information.  Then one of Grimes’ people caught him slipping information across the fence and Grimes killed him.  Hung his body from the top of the fence, too, to warn us off. 

Look what you’ve done, I said.  Look what you’ve done. 

**What happened after?**

We attacked the Lion’s Den.  Well, not me, I didn’t do much attacking—I provided the Governor with intellectual services, understand—but a small force of our men. They followed Merle’s map, but Grimes knew somehow what Merle was doing.  He had fed Merle false information.  The raiding party was ambushed by a herd of biters, and Grimes and his people sealed the exits.

We never saw those men again.

After, the Governor couldn’t send another raiding party right away, people wouldn’t stand for it.  They were feeling vulnerable.  Twice we had gone up against Grimes’ people and twice we had lost.  Why bother, they said.  Why not stay here and fortify our walls? Leave them alone and they’ll leave us alone.

The Governor wasn’t happy, but he couldn’t act without losing the support of the people.  That was important to him, see.  The support of the people.  He needed them to follow him.  Needed their obedience. 

So we let it lie for a few months, let Grimes get comfortable, _secure,_ relaxed. 

Then, the Governor tried…other methods.  The starvation tactic I mentioned earlier—he had his people hunt all the game in the area into the ground.  We cleaned out every supermarket, burned every cornfield, every apple grove we could find.  We didn’t even eat half of what we took.  We just burned it all. 

We also started herding biters towards the prison.  There was a—a hole in one of the buildings, a back door, if you will.  We would take great herds of biters and just guide them inside.  That backfired eventually, let me tell you.

By winter, Grimes had caught on.  Some of his people found some of our people out foraging.  One of those men came back with both hands cut off, a warning.  The others didn’t come back at all.

**Was that the day Woodbury attacked the Lion’s Den directly?  Head on, I mean?**

The first time, yes.  The Governor managed to rally the people and led the charge himself.  Twenty of our people went out that night.  Six came back.  I still don’t know what happened to them, how fifteen people could crush our forces so easily.

[ _The Unconsecrated at the fence snarls louder.  We are probably the freshest meat it’s seen in weeks.  It can almost force its hands through the links.  Milton continues to drink his tea, unaware of the Unconsecrated baying for his blood._ ]

It was then that I knew— _I knew—_ that Woodbury would lose.  Immovable means immovable—something had to give.  The Governor was insane by this time, you know.  Grief, stress, and his wounds had destroyed him.  The man I knew, that I followed out of Atlanta, was long gone. He would keep throwing himself—and us—against Grimes until we all had died. 

Three days after the defeat at the Lion’s Den, I left Woodbury.  I just packed up all my work and moved on.  I knew about this place from the maps, and the only other person who knew about it was Merle.  I made him build the fence, see.  I told him it was on the Governor’s orders, top secret, he didn’t even want it mentioned.  It was a failsafe, in case Woodbury fell.

Dixon built the fence and then he died.  It was perfect.  I came here, got settled, and then I went to Grimes. 

He almost killed me, the first time I showed up.  He didn’t know me but Andrea did—she had been with us for a time—and she convinced him to at least hear me out.  I gave Grimes everything.  I told him all about Woodbury, all about our defenses, what the Governor planned to do next.  I told him he had to act quickly or the Governor would come back, and this time he wouldn’t be turned away.

[ _He stops drinking, staring off into the woods.  For the first time he notices the Unconsecrated, and stands up to get a closer look, motioning for me to follow.  At the fence, it’s obvious that this is an older Unconsecrated, maybe two or three years dead.  There isn’t much left of its face anymore and most of its hair is gone.  Its fingers are scraped down to the bone, bits of flesh hanging stuck in the fence.  It reaches for us._ ]

A fine specimen.  Strong, to have lasted so long.  This was one who died from a bite.  I found that out, you know, that those who were bitten were stronger than those who just died.  They usually reanimated quicker too—something to do with concentrated doses of the infection. 

[ _His eyes soften._ ]

I miss my work.  There wasn’t much for me to do here, once I’d left.  Woodbury was nice because I had space to work, I had electricity, I had people to bring me the biters to study.  I had a _purpose._ Here, well.

[ _He smiles nervously._ ]

Not so much.  I went back to Woodbury, after Grimes’ people had cleared it out.  Just to see what I could salvage. There wasn’t much.  Months of work, ruined.  All my samples, all my studies… Everything was just gone.  Burned to the ground.  I was lucky that I found what I did.

[ _He nods across the yard where a few people work, digging rhythmically._ ]

They were the only ones left.  I brought them here, and we’ve been together ever since.  You say it’s been twenty-five years?

**Give or take.**

Remarkable.  I wouldn’t have guessed, really.  It doesn’t feel like that long.  It feels like…it feels like only yesterday I was in Woodbury making plans.  Strange. 

**How does it feel?**

[ _He stops looking at the Unconsecrated, startled.  His shoves his hands in his pockets, shifting from foot to foot._ ]

Excuse me?

**How does it feel, knowing that you betrayed your people?  Knowing that what you did cost them their lives?**

[ _He smiles._ ]

You are very young, aren’t you?

**Why does that matter?**

Oh, it doesn’t.  I’m sure you saw your share of the ugly of the world.  I don’t feel bad about what happened in Woodbury, not really.  Yes, I pity the ones who had nothing to do with Grimes and the Governor.  I am sorry that they were caught up in something beyond the scope of their understanding.  But, like I said, collateral damage.

I did what I had to.  I warned him not to go after Grimes, I _warned_ him, over and over again.  He didn’t listen.  He brought his ruin on himself.

[ _He pauses, one hand systematically smoothing down what’s left of his wispy gray hair._ ]

I did what I had to do.   


	4. Carl Grimes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to the lovely Twizzler for her awesome beta :) 
> 
> A few notes about this chapter: I have this weird headcanon about Carl and Judith Grimes. Carl is Rick's son biologically but Shane's son ideologically--in canon he's twelve and harder than Rick. Judith, however, is Shane's child biologically but Rick's ideologically--she chooses to be like her father and see the goodness in everyone. 
> 
> Aasd;ljfasdjf, Grimes family feels. Also! Really strong language in this chapter and allusions to rape and scientific atrocities! Also casual discussions of mutilation and murder, because, you know, _Woodbury._

3\. _Carl Grimes_

[ _Today it is raining, great, heavy sheets that drench the cornfields and rattle the roof of the Lion’s Den.  Carl Grimes walks the halls with me, pointing at structures through the narrow windows._ ]

That trench system you see right there is the blood of this place.  We dug it pretty early on, over the first summer. It goes all the way to the creek, ‘bout a half-mile from here.  First it was just for drinking water—we didn’t have enough to last very long, all the bottled water went dry after winter—but then we started spreading it around, using it to water the crops.

When it rains, half the water goes to the fields and the other half gets funneled into the reserves, in case we have a dry summer.  See how some of the trenches have walls around them?  That’s so when the field trenches overflow, they don’t flood the cornfields and kill off the crop.  When the water gets higher than the walls, it spills into our reserves instead of washing away our food.

Glenn came up with that idea.  The trench system was his baby—he even found concrete mix to floor the drinking trenches with, so they would be cleaner. 

**But he had real children, right?**

[ _Carl Grimes gives me a strange, sideways look.  He is not a tall man, only standing a little taller than I do, and his hair is dark and cut close to his head.  He has old marks on his arms and only one eye—the right side of his face is a mass of gnarled, flushed scar tissue, as if his eye was shot out, or burned._

 _He has big hands, though, and despite his stature he carries himself proudly.  It’s easy to see why they call him the Young Lion._ ]

Yeah, two, Hershel and Annette.  They weren’t ‘til later, though.  He built the trenches first. 

[ _We keep walking, our footsteps almost muffled by the pounding rain.  Grimes looks me up and down and then seems to come to a decision._ ]

You had questions?  I don’t have a lot’a time—got a community to run.  You know how it goes.

[ _He doesn’t seem to like me much—I can understand.  Most people don’t want outsiders coming into their lives, sniffing out their secrets.  Especially secrets as brutal and old as these._ ]

**Yes, sorry.  Your father, the Lionheart, took you on the Woodbury raid, didn’t he?  When your people drove Woodbury’s people out?**

Yeah, he did.  That was a first—usually he left me here when he and the others went hunting.

**Why? It seems like you’d be safer with him.**

You’d think that, wouldn’t you?  [ _He taps his right side, right below his ribs._ ] He used to.  Before we found this place, before we found Hershel, even, I went with him lookin’ for a little girl.  She’d gotten lost in the woods—a walker herd on the highway split us apart.  I convinced my parents to let me tag along when they went looking the next morning.  I was with my dad and—and Shane, and I thought I was safe.  They were both cops before.  Dad was quick and smart and Shane was the best shot I’ve ever seen. 

**But you got hurt anyway.**

[ _His lips curl into a lopsided smile—he can’t grin with the damaged side of his face._ ] I got hurt.  Got shot, actually.  Some hunter was out and he didn’t see me.  Shot me right through this big deer.  They tell me I nearly died, but I don’t remember.  I remember that deer, though.  Pretty thing.  It wasn’t food to me, not then.  It was just—pretty.

[ _He makes a sound, half frustrated, half amused._ ]  Now, I’d just eat it. 

After that, though, I wasn’t taken on many raids.  Dad thought it was safer back here, and after Mom died—after she died, he barely let me go out to harvest. 

**So what changed?**

They attacked us.  Dad’d caught some of their people fucking with our supplies outside the fence.  I think they only sent one guy back with his hand cut off, you know, like they used to do to thieves?  And that night, Woodbury came at us.

We had good lookouts that night, Daryl and Glenn and Maggie up in the towers.  They saw Woodbury coming and raised the alarm.

We met them in the fields, hiding in the corn.  It was—it was a pretty quick fight.  Machetes and knives, no guns.  They didn’t know where we were.  The Governor lit up a good bit of the corn, but we were smart, and Dad was fast. 

We didn’t lose anybody that night.  Woodbury lost most of their guys—Governor lived, screaming about how we’d see him again—but we didn’t lose anyone.  We weren’t even gonna do anything about them—we were just gonna let them slink back and know who’d beaten them.  Maybe they’d learned, we thought.  This was the second time Dad had defeated them.  They wouldn’t dare lose more of their people, not with summer coming on and all the frozen geeks coming back. 

But then Milton showed up.  The _scientist._ Andrea told me the kind’a shit he got up to in Woodbury.  Human experiments, walker experiments, all kinds of sick, crazy shit.  He told the Governor how to hurt people better, you know?  How to make them suffer, how to use the walkers like pets to fuck over everyone else. 

I nearly shot him when he came up to the front gate.  He’d brought—he’d brought walkers like _dogs,_ trailing after him on a leash.  I was on watch that day.  I had him in my sights.  I would’a shot, too, except Andrea came out and wouldn’t give me a clear shot. 

And then Dad—[ _He stops, lips curling again.  This time, it isn’t a friendly smile._ ]  Dad listened to her and let Milton come in.

 

**Who was Andrea?  I’ve heard her name mentioned before.**

[ _He snorts._ ] She was—well.  She was _the Lioness._ She was one of us originals—we found her and her sister in Atlanta with Dale.  They were the first ones in our group, I guess.  They were waiting in the quarry, collecting people. 

I didn’t mind her at first, not really.  She never talked to me.  She was always with Dale or Glenn, running around doing things.  That’s what you should know about her—she always had to be doing something.  She couldn’t be still.  It was like—it was like that’s how she handled everything, through work.  Dad was the same way.

Maybe that’s why they started fucking.  They ran out’a things to do so they started doing each other. 

**Your father was with the Lioness?**

Funny, right?  Lionheart, Lioness.  They started telling people they were _married_ after a while, even though Andrea brought the Governor’s bastard kid with her—

[ _He stops again, forcing himself to be calm._ ]

I can’t blame them, I guess.  That was—that was a hard time.  Dad was lonely after Mom died and Andrea—

I didn’t like her, but I can’t hate her, or blame her for being with Dad.  They were good for each other.  Towards the end she was the only one who could bring him back when he started losing time.  They kept each other in check.  Or something. 

He only let Milton in because of her, I think.  She fought with him like no other for that.  We didn’t even have to take him into the prison, she said, we can just deal with him out here.

So they did, and Milton spilled his guts.  Told us everything—Woodbury wouldn’t stop, he said.  The Governor wouldn’t stop ‘til he’d killed every last one of us.  Even Andrea’s baby, his son.  I dunno how Milton knew about the kid, Andrea had him here, but he did, and he used it.

Andrea and Dad let that shivering piece of shit live, as a—as a reward or something, and we spent the next two days more scared than we’d been since the first winter, when we were homeless.

God, it was crazy.  We pulled everyone inside, locked our doors, turned the walkers loose in the back to keep the back door closed.  We sealed up the trenches so they couldn’t poison the water and pulled in half our crop early, just in case.  We took everyone off the outer fence and had three people in every guard tower, everyone with guns and ammo.  You know how rare guns and ammo got, a few years in?  This was before Andrea figured out how to make bullets, years before—we had maybe three hundred rounds for eighty-four people.  Not enough, not nearly enough. 

Dad and the others decided real quick that Woodbury had to go. They’d been fucking with us for a long time, doing what they could to drive us out.  Walker bodies ruining the creek water, all the game hunted down and the supermarkets picked clean, corn and fruit burned, you name it.  They’d only done an actual attack twice, once through the back—we were ready for them then—and then again a few days before Milton showed up. 

Enough was enough, Dad said.  We’d had enough—enough hunger because of them, enough fear, enough hiding in the dark.  It was time to _earn_ our names.   They called us lions—we’d show them that we were lions.

**Your father sounds like an inspirational man.**

[ _He laughs.  I’m not sure if it’s biter or not._ ]  You could say that.  When he talked, you wanted to listen.  You wanted to—you wanted to follow him wherever he went.  When I was a kid I used to idolize him, you know?  I used to wanna be just like him. 

**But you changed?**

[ _He’s quiet for a moment, struggling for a response._ ] Yeah, guess I did.  I got older.  There were—other ways of thinking, I realized.  Dad was too—too _nice._ He believed in the best of people, even when they were people like the Governor, bad people, people who’d rip us to shreds, who’d hurt us, who’d hurt my _sister_ —

I was mad at him when he left, you know.  I was so angry. 

But during the Woodbury War I was still a kid—I wasn’t angry, not then, not yet.  I believed my dad when he said that if we drove the people out of Woodbury, they’d leave us alone.

**You went along with it.**

I went along with it.

We waited ‘til dark—we weren’t scared of the night, see, even though walkers got more excited, even though we could barely see.  We did our best work in the dark.  We didn’t have cars by then, all the gas was gone, but we had some bikes, and the walk wasn’t far once you knew the way to go. 

There were twenty of us in that raiding party.  I was with Dad, Daryl, Glenn, Andrea, and Maggie.  Tyreese and Michonne took the rest around the side.  The plan was pretty straight forward; herd Woodbury’s people towards the back of the town, where we’d left the gate open, and burn whatever we could to the ground.

Mich’s people got started pretty fast.  They lit the first fire just inside the wall, to draw what was left of the Governor’s warriors away.  Then we went over the front and started fighting.  We didn’t use guns—there just wasn’t enough ammo—so it was all up close fighting, ‘cept Daryl who had his crossbow. 

**Did you meet with resistance?**

What, from Woodbury?  Hell yeah.  We were forcing them out of their homes.  They fought us tooth and nail.  Well, some of them.  A lot of the grown-ups fought back, moms who didn’t want us to hurt their kids, older brothers and sisters, fathers who thought we’d take their women.

**Did you?**

[ _He gives me a disgusted look._ ]  No.  We never did that.  That’s—that’s _sick._ We only did what we had to survive.  We didn’t go around pillaging and plundering like, like pirates or something.  We never took anyone or raped anybody’s wives or daughters.  The hell kind’a savages d’you think we are?

We didn’t even kill everyone that night—we only killed the ones who fought us instead of running for it.  Back then Dad couldn’t live with all those deaths on his mind, understand.  Killing people who attacked us first was one thing, but he couldn’t—wouldn’t—execute the seventy people in Woodbury at the time.  He wouldn’t do it.  Would’a saved us a lot’a grief down the road, lot’a lives, but he just _wouldn’t._

The Lionheart chickened out.  [ _He curls his lip again, tapping his fingers against his hip rhythmically._ ] 

Dad got split from the rest of us, pretty early on.  We were burning the town in sections, see, piece by piece to make sure Woodbury knew what we were there for.  Fear tactics, Dad said it was.  He and Glenn came up with it—you don’t wanna kill your enemy, or fight them ‘til they’re exhausted. You always wanna leave someone alive.  You always want someone to carry a message back.

“All war is deception,” Dad said.  We had to make them think that we would kill them, that we wouldn’t stop, that there were six of us for every one of them and we were all hungry and ready to kill.  There were twenty of us that night—we had to make Woodbury believe that there were two hundred of us. 

We did that by splitting up and lighting fires everywhere, then running back and forth screaming.  The fire made our shadows move strangely, carried our voices weirdly.  We were everywhere, it looked like—everywhere the Governor’s people turned, there was a lion at their throat.

The plan was to grapeshot—that’s what we called it, grapeshot, like the ammo—for a while, to burn the front edge of town and herd Woodbury’s people towards the back.  We were gonna meet up again in the town square after thirty minutes, and drive the people out from there. 

Dad never showed up.  Milton had given us a map of the town and Dad was supposed to burn down the Governor’s apartment building.  He was gonna run up and down that street, herd everyone away, and then meet up with us, but he never did.  We had to go back for him. 

[ _His hands curl into fists._ ]

D’you know why?  Because he was pulling people out of the fire!  He had them all lined up on the side road and he was going into this burning building, just pulling people out and setting them on the sidewalk.  I couldn’t believe it!  What happened to fucking Sun Tzu?  What about the people we’d lost to these monsters? 

He had a fight to lead and there my dad was saving our enemies.  He wouldn’t leave until we’d gotten them all out either, and then he’d sent them on their way.  Not even towards the rest of their people—he said, “go south, go towards Atlanta, there are places you can stay.” 

[ _He is shaking with anger, every step quick and vicious._ ] 

He saved their lives, and then we went to get rid of the rest of Woodbury.  When they saw us coming, the Governor tried to get them to fight.  He tried to get them to stand up against us, because there were sixteen of us by then—we’d lost some friends—and a shit ton more of them. 

**But they ran.**

[ _He nods._ ]  They ran.  Some of them killed themselves trying to get away—they ran into burning buildings, onto each other’s knives, into the walls where they tried to climb and spilled over the other side.  Woodbury was built to keep walkers out, not to hold everyone in, and maybe in the daylight, if they hadn’t been so scared, the people wouldn’t have panicked so bad.

See, that’s the important part—never, ever panic.  It doesn’t matter how bad things look, how fucked you seem, as long as you don’t panic, you might be able to make it out.  But if you panic, you’re lost.

That was the one good thing Dad always stuck to—don’t panic.  He never panicked.  I never saw him go crazy with fear.  Anger, yeah.  Grief, yeah.  But he didn’t panic, and he drilled us for years to keep cool heads.

The Governor hadn’t been doing that with his people in Woodbury.  I dunno why—maybe he didn’t care, maybe he thought they’d be easier to control, whatever—but they just freaked out when they saw us coming and flew apart.

Most of them died before they could get away.  Others ran in all different directions, scattering into the woods.  We could hear the walkers getting them.

Some, maybe fifteen or twenty, managed to stay with the Governor when he finally broke and ran.  Me, Dad, and Daryl followed them, just ran after them in the dark for what felt like forever.  They couldn’t see us and we could barely see them, but we made enough noise that they didn’t stop. 

By the time it was morning, Woodbury’s people were long gone and the town itself was still burning.  It was burning a week later when we came back to make sure no one had come back, too, _and_ the week after that. 

[ _He stops talking for a moment, concentrating on just walking, his one eye dark and thoughtful._ ]

Those people that my dad saved?  Some of them came back when the town finally stopped burning.  They holed up in one of the few buildings that hadn’t collapsed, and they had guns and rocks and homemade bombs, I guess they’d found some gas in Milton’s workshop.  

Dad tried to talk them down.  He tried to remind them what he’d done for them—he’d saved their lives.  He’d freed them from the Governor.  They could go where they wanted, do what they wanted.  They didn’t have to be afraid and stuck in Woodbury anymore.

But these guys—they _wanted_ to be stuck in Woodbury.  They wanted someone controlling their every move. They wanted to live in a police state, too scared to do anything but what the boss said.

They wanted someone to put a gun in their hands and say, it’s okay.  You’re only following orders.

And the Governor had told them that the Lionheart was to be destroyed, no matter what the cost.  No matter how many of them died trying to kill my dad, even though he just wouldn’t die. 

So they blew the building. 

[ _He taps the scar tissue where his right eye once was._ ]  I lost this that day.  Piece of burning shrapnel came flying right by, knocked me out cold.  I didn’t wake up ‘til I was back here.  Dad had gotten it pretty bad, his front was all cut up and burned to hell, but he survived too.  

I remember going to see him, and he was so pale lying in that bed, it was like before when he’d gotten shot—

[ _He stops._ ]

I remember saying, “This is what happens when you’re nice.  This is what your kindness gets you.  It’s not like it was before,” I said.  “You can’t keep playing the nice guy and expecting no one to get killed.”

[ _He laughs tiredly._ ]  We had a big fight that day, me and good ol’ Dad.  It wasn’t the first or the last, but I remember thinking, this is it.  This is where we part ways.  This is the one thing we can’t reconcile.  That’s a big word, _reconcile._ Know what it means?  I didn’t—I was in fifth grade when the world went to shit.

Hershel told me, though.  _Reconcile_ , verb; to bring into agreement or harmony, to make compatible or consistent.  Dad and I couldn’t do that, after that.  Years passed, we lost more friends, Woodbury came again and nearly wiped us out, and we just _couldn’t_ get over that.

[ _His good eye softens and we stop walking.  I am nearly at the door to the outside.  The light filtering through the windows makes dust light up golden and softens the harsh edges of the bars on the windows.  It is strangely beautiful._ ]

We just couldn’t put it back together.       

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: 
> 
> 1\. "All war is deception" is from Sun Tzu's _Art of War_ , and it seems like a very Rick tactic. 
> 
> 2\. Grapeshot is an older type of ammunition that was basically a bunch of little metal balls or slugs in a canvas bag, usually shot through cannons or heavy artillery. Once fired, the shot scattered and went through multiple targets instead of just one.


	5. Daryl Dixon

4\. _Daryl Dixon_

[ _The cornfields go as far as I can see, stretching alongside the fence for maybe miles, made safe by chain links and razor wire.  They wave gently in the dry breeze, the picture of prewar tranquility, dotted here and there with a person caring for the crop or someone keeping watch.  Apple trees crouch close to the paths, the fruit not quite ripe, and tiny sections of wheat are carefully being coaxed out of the stubborn earth._

_In the distance I can see people walking against the fence, just tiny pricks of darkness against the golden corn.  The sun is quickly setting—they’re doing their nightly rounds, checking the fence for any breaches and dealing with the Unconsecrated that have gathered at the edges, trying to shove their way into this little corner of the world._

_Daryl Dixon meets me in the middle of the fields, standing with his crossbow resting against his leg.  He is a solemn man, probably ten years older than Maggie Rhee and battle-scarred, his bare arms tan and crisscrossed with old wounds. He insisted that we meet out here, at twilight.  I don’t know why, but since the Lion’s Den is little more than a converted jail, I can understand the love of open air._

_I introduce myself—he doesn’t answer.  We stand in awkward silence for a few minutes as the sun slides lower and turns the fields gold.    Finally, I clear my throat and ask if he’s ready to start._

_He stares at me, making it very clear that he doesn’t trust me or like me very much.  I have already asked my question—“What was the Woodbury War?”  He seems to be waiting for something.  Finally, he takes a deep, annoyed breath, fingers tight around his crossbow, and begins._ ]

‘Woodbury War’, huh.  Fuckin’ shitshow, is what it was.  Weren’t much of a war, neither.  War.  What’d you think it was, some big gunfight?  Heroes and villains, epic music, that kinda shit? 

There was none of that.  Lot’a screamin’, though.  Lot’a blood.  You ever been in a firefight in the dark? 

[ _I shake my head.  My settlement came close a few times, but we never had to deal with a night raid or an assault after dark._ ]

It was hell, ‘s what it was.  No one could see for shit, and all you could hear was the screamin’ and the walkers.

**The whole Lion’s Den wasn’t clear?**

Nope.  Didn’t have enough ammo.  We cleared it bit by bit as we needed to, and we didn’t need much.  It was safer to protect what we had, not go runnin’ off to try and secure a whole damn prison with who knows how many geeks stuck inside.  We didn’t know where we could get trapped, or where the highest number of walkers was, or even the layout of the prison.  We didn’t wanna risk it.

We didn’t figure out there was a fuckin’ hole in the back ‘til the Governor’s boys came through.  We should’a asked—that’s how Tyreese got in, he told us later—but we never did.  Didn’t even think there was a back door to be honest.  When we took the place we had to cut a hole in the fence and fight aour way ‘cross the yard—didn’t even occur to us that they’d be an easier way.  When we got Glenn and Maggie back from Woodbury we were so busy puttin’ ourselves back together we didn’t even think about it.  Paid for it later, though. 

[ _His eyes flash, fingers tightening on his crossbow._ ]

We paid for it.

**So the Woodbury War started when the Governor’s men snuck in through the back.**

[ _His face is unreadable, but dark._ ]

No.

**How did it start, then?**

[ _He looks away, out across the fields._ ]

Ask someone else.  You said you’d ask about the fight in the prison.  Nothin’ else.  I ain’t tellin’ you about the rest of it.

**Fair enough.  What about the prison raid, then?**

There were three.  First and second ones weren’t a problem—first one happened pretty early on, before the fight got serious. We knew they were comin’ and we were ready for ‘em.  We had a nice little kill room set up, the bait all laid out.  Once we heard ‘em in the halls, it was easy to take ‘em to the traps.  Like coon huntin’—turn the dogs loose and just wait for the coon to get treed. 

**Kill room?**

Yeah, this little place off to the side, in one of the sections we hadn’t cleared yet.  Glenn rigged the doors so we could shut ‘em from a safe spot, and there were probably a good twenty or thirty geeks wanderin’ around in there.  Once the Woodbury guys went through and got into the kill room, we pulled the doors closed and just waited. 

The screamin’ was pretty bad, but even Woodbury guys couldn’t last long against that many geeks.  It was over in maybe five, six minutes.  Not a single one of our people got close enough for ‘em to even get a shot off.  A bloodless victory, Rick said.  Bit of a lie, if you ask me.  There was a lot’a blood, it was just that none of it was ours. 

After that, Woodbury’s offense pretty much shriveled up and died.  I guess the Governor couldn’t keep sendin’ his guys to die in our slaughterhouse—his people were tired’a losin’ their brothers, husbands, and kids to us.  We didn’t see much of him and his band of cowards ‘til a while later, when they attacked us again.  We saw ‘em comin’ and were watin’ in the fields—caught ‘em in the dark.  Didn’t lose anybody that day either. 

Then, a few days later, we went to Woodbury and burned it to the ground.  That was—that was a fight.  They fought us hard to keep their little fuckin’ circus, we just fought harder.  We drove them out.  Me n’ Rick ran ‘em for miles, just pushin’ and pushin’ until we were pretty sure they couldn’t bounce back. 

**But they bounced back.**

Few years later, yeah.  We didn’t see ‘em for a good few winters, and we were careful about it.  We looked around, kept an eye on things.  Kept track of everyone and every group in the area.  We didn’t hear shit about Woodbury still bein’ around until they were already here.

**What happened?**

[ _He snorts, disgusted with the memory, and shields his eyes against the sinking sun.  In the fields, the guards are coming closer and the farmers are calling it a day, packing up and making their way back to the Lion’s Den._ ]

We fucked up is what happened.  We were s’posed to have a watch that night, we were s’posed to check all the borders, but we just—didn’t.  We forgot, I guess.  We didn’t want to.  It was cold, colder than it’d been in a while.  We didn’t think that any walkers would get in, and we thought everyone else was either too scared or too cold to come lookin’ for a fight.

We got stupid, and the Governor and his guys, maybe fifty men, mean, nasty sonsabitches, ready to fight and die for what we had, came in. 

It wasn’t a bloodless victory.

 They would’a killed us all in our beds if Rick n’ me hadn’t been awake.  Neither of us ever really got good at sleepin’, and it helped to walk around the Den, checkin’ up on everyone, makin’ sure everything was safe.  We were in Block D when we heard ‘em.  One of the Governor’s guys wasn’t a quiet killer, and he’d missed. 

See, what they were doin’ was goin’ through cell by cell, quiet-like, and just cuttin’ the throats of whoever was in there.  There’s a way to do it quick, see—

[ _He bares his throat, tracing a line.  There’s a scar down the side of his neck, thick and knobbly white._ ]

You can’t just cut wherever—best way’s right through the jugulars and the carotids, all of ‘em, a big strong cut right through the middle.  Don’t even have to cut end to end, but you gotta get deep enough to sever the veins.  Whoever’s throat you just cut’ll bleed out quick and quiet.  Might not even wake up. 

One of the Governor’s guys missed.  He got one of our people, Lauren, hell of a woman, right up ‘til the end, a little too shallow and she woke up.  She managed to fight off her attacker—with her throat half-cut, mind—and ran down towards us.  Raised hell, screamin’ bloody murder, howlin’about the men in Cell Block D. 

Rick n’ me got to the Cell Block right as her attacker caught up with her.  We saw him finish what he started and she—she dropped like a stone, but she’d done a bang-up job.  Everybody in the block was awake and fightin’, and Rick started yellin’ run, run, get back to Block C.

He took off back down the hallway, raisin’ the alarm.  I killed Lauren’s murderer and followed. 

If we’d locked the doors behind us—

[ _He stops violently, a muscle working in his jaw._ ]

If we’d locked the doors behind us, we could’a holed up in our block and taken Woodbury out in the mornin’, or whenever we damn well wanted to.  We could’a regrouped, snuck around behind ‘em, maybe got ‘em into the kill room.  I’da liked to see the Governor get ripped apart by some starvin’ geeks.

But Rick wouldn’t lock the doors behind us.  That would’a cut off the escape of everyone in Block D—they would’a been caught between Woodbury and iron bars.  Drawback of livin’ in prison, I guess.  The bars keep the walkers out, but they were made first to keep people in.  And Rick wouldn’t do that to our people.  He wouldn’t leave them to get butchered, even though it meant we could trap the Governor and his guys.

Most of Block D died anyway.  The Woodbury guys quit bein’ quiet real fast and just started killin’, and our people couldn’t get to their weapons fast enough. 

The Governor followed us through Block C with his army right behind, screamin’ like geeks who hadn’t seen food in a year.  By the time we got to Pride Rock—that’s what we called Cell Block C, our block, the original one—everyone was up in arms, but it was never gonna be anything but a bloodbath. The Governor and his had come too far.  Their escape was sealed behind ‘em.  All they could do was throw themselves at us and try and wipe us out.

They didn’t come to steal our home, see.  It was never about takin’ the Den.  It was always about murderin’ the lot of us, down the littlest baby. 

We met ‘em in the mess.  Didn’t even have enough time to set up traps or nothin’, it was just us and them and our blades.  Me n’ Glenn were at the door, waitin’.  We were the first line of defense—behind us was Rick n’ Michonne, they had the longest blades, and behind them was Maggie and Andrea and Carl and Beth.  Tyreese was up in the aerie to pick ‘em off—should’a been me up there with my bow, but there wasn’t _time_ —and Hershel was gettin’ the kids to safety.

**Kids?**

God, the kids.  Sim was still so little then, maybe four, and she was the oldest.  Then there was Andrea’s son Dale, not more’n three, and her and Rick’s little Amy.  Maggie and Glenn’s babies.  The little girl Michonne picked up in the woods—just a toddler, that girl, mute as a mouse but sweetest thing—and Tyreese’s kid.

[ _His face twists, old fear starting and dying in his dark eyes._ ]

My boy, my little boy, he wasn’t even two, and he was _screamin_ ’—

[ _He has to stop again, forcing himself to take a deep shuddering breath.  One of the men along the wall sees us and waves.  He’s a young man, maybe twenty, and even from here I can see that he has a bright smile._

_Daryl, for the first time since I walked up to him, smiles back._ ]

Hershel did right by those kids, Hershel and Carol both.  The pair of ‘em fought like lions, once Glenn n’ me couldn’t keep Woodbury back.  They broke through us—got me across the throat, fuckers—

[ _He pauses to trace the scar on his neck again, thoughtfully_.]

—and tried to bum rush Rick n’ Mich.  

They killed Glenn in front of me.  It took four of ‘em to take him down, kid went out like a hero, takin’ off hands and ears and eyes.  Two of ‘em jumped him and held him down, and he kicked and fought but he couldn’t—he was already hurt pretty bad, and he just didn’t have enough in him to throw off two big guys while another was shovin’ a knife in his kidneys and another was bringin’ it down on his head.

He didn’t scream, our Chinaman.  I—didn’t give him enough credit, half the time, but he went out like a man.  When Glenn died—Rick, he just lost it.  Fugued out on us, that’s what Hershel called it.  Fugued out.

**What does that mean?**

Dunno, I look like I went to medical school?  Darlin’, I barely got my GED.  I dunno what it _means,_ but what it was was when Rick just… left.  His body’d still be there, he’d still be breathin’ and fightin’ and movin’ around, but he wasn’t there.  Everything that he was, all his mercy and goodness and intelligence, was gone. 

**Like a berserker.**

[ _He snorts._ ]

Naw, like a walker.  That’s what he was, a livin’ walker.  You couldn’t reason with him, couldn’t talk him down, couldn’t do anything but get out of his way.    We knew that.  Once I managed to get up again I got Maggie away from Glenn’s body, and we went back into the block itself.  Rick didn’t, but then he didn’t need to.  No one could even touch him.  He was everywhere with his machete, dancin’ around ‘em like he was—like was fuckin’ Spike Lee or somethin’.  When they cut him he didn’t feel it.  He just keep goin’.  Nothin’ short of a headshot would’a put him down that night.

By the time some of the Woodbury guys got into the cells I was pretty useless, losin’ blood all over the place.  Maggie kept me safe.  I never passed out, so I could see everythin’ else—

Hershel fell at the stairs, protecting the kids.  They got him pretty good—he only had one leg, see—and he went down, but his body blocked the stairs ‘til Andrea could get to ‘em, and they didn’t name her Lioness for nothin’.  She didn’t let a single person get up those stairs. 

The Governor tried, near the end.  He knew he was licked, Rick was droppin’ his bitches like flies left and right, blood-soaked and roarin’ like the lion they named him for, and Carl and the others had the ones not near Rick pretty much taken care of. 

The Governor tried to overpower Andrea, tried to shove her aside.  He was gonna grab one of the kids and use ‘em as a hostage, I think, buy his freedom with one of our babies, or maybe he was just gonna kill as many of ‘em as he could, to hurt us right where our hearts lived, but Andrea didn’t let him.  She fought him hard, gave as good as she got.  He got her chest pretty good, her face too, but she damn near cut off his hand and she bought Mich enough time to get on his blind side.

Mich cut that fucker’s head off.  Not right away, understand; she started with the legs.  One, then the other.  Then his arms.  Then an ear, just because she could.  He wasn’t beggin’, he never begged, but he was screamin’, his one eye bugged out, just screamin’ and screamin’. 

She cut off his head and hung it outside on the fence, still snappin’ and snarlin’.  We made him live as a walker, as a head, for years, ‘til he wasn’t much more’n snappin’ bone.  Bitch. 

[ _He nods at the fence, where a bleached human skull is just visible in the growing dark, orange in the dim light.  It no longer snaps and snarls._ ]

Son of a bitch got more’n he deserved.  We should’a drawn it out.  Cut him apart slow-like, intimate, piece by little piece.  I would’a made him scream ‘til he couldn’t no more, then I’da made him beg. 

[ _He notices my flinch._ ]

He would’a deserved it, every second of it.  He killed six of my family.  I lost Glenn to him, and Hershel, and Axel and Ty and Lauren.  [ _His face twists again._ ] Merle.  He threatened my son.  He threatened my wife.  He damn near killed Rick, and that man was my brother. 

You might think we’re _uncivilized_ down here.  Just a bunch’a crazy rednecks, breedin’ and fightin’ and huntin’, and maybe we are.  The end of the world sure as hell wasn’t good to us, and we had to go a little wild. 

After that attack, it took Andrea two weeks to bring Rick back to us, to get him out of the fugue.  Maggie buried her husband and her daddy the same night.  Beth lost her baby.  Block D lost _half_ of its occupants—that’s fifty people gone in less than two hours.  My son had nightmares for years, and Sim wasn’t a baby anymore. 

That night took nearly everything from us.  D’you know how many vultures came around, after they’d heard how broken we were?  We fought off sixteen rival groups that spring, _sixteen._ We hadn’t had challengers in a good few years, ‘til the Governor destroyed it all. He had managed to burn half of our stores.  We nearly starved through spring.  He killed our best doctor.  I damn near died myself, from infection, and Rick was laid up for two months. 

Years of work, lost.  We were still recovering half a decade later.  There was even talk of movin’ on.  We were gonna give up the Den, our _home,_ ‘cause we couldn’t bear the ghosts, we couldn’t handle the blood on the floor. 

**But you stayed.**

[ _He snorts again, shouldering his crossbow.  It’s almost completely dark now, the fence shining silver, the corn turned into a waving sea of gray.  The Lion’s Den is a mass of black against the stars.  We begin to walk back slowly along the dirt path—in the night quiet, I can hear the moans of the Unconsecrated, and what sounds suspiciously like the rattle of bone jaws clattering together._ ]

Yeah, [ _he says, like he can barely believe himself._ ] We stayed. 


	6. Judith Grimes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end! I really have a hard time with endings, so forgive me if this note is a little screwy. I'm kind of at a loss. 
> 
> Anyway, an enormous thank you to [Aubrey](neverfadingrain.tumblr.com) for her awesome edits and motivational skills. I'm so ending-phobic that I never would have written this without her encouragement! 
> 
> Also a huge thank you to Kate for being awesome and helping me out when this was still in the early stages. A lot of what Judith says comes from those conversations. <3
> 
> And of course thanks to you, everyone who's read and enjoyed Lions! You guys are phenomenal. I love you all so much! Thanks for sticking with me! I hope you enjoy this last bit!

5\. _Judith Grimes_

 

[ _It’s raining again, lightly today, hardly more than a whisper across the roof.  Judith Grimes meets me in the mess hall, accompanied by two others—Carl Grimes and the guard who first let me into the prison._

 _The blonde girl, the youngest of the three, smiles shyly._ ]

I see you’ve met my sister.  [ _Judith’s voice is warm._ ]  This is Amy, and I guess you know Carl. 

[ _Amy and Carl nod and wave goodbye.  Amy is small but tough-looking, but she shares Carl’s nose and strong gait just like Judith and Carl share dark hair.  The family resemblance between them is strong._ ]

So you’re the Northerner.  Hope you’ve been having a good time down here?  I know it’s probably nothing like you’ve got up there, but it works for us.

**No, it’s been—it’s been good.  Interesting.**

[ _She grins, leading me out of the mess hall and back into the halls._ ]

That’s good.  Uncle Daryl and Carl didn’t give you too hard a time?  I know Aunt Maggie was fine, she’s awesome, but Uncle Daryl gets a little grouchy sometimes and Carl’s a dick, so.

**You don’t like your brother?**

Oh, no, that’s not what I meant!  I mean yeah, he’s a dick, but he’s a good guy.  Good big brother.  He tries, you know.  He just—isn’t as calm about it as Dad was.  He’s got a bit of a different leadership style.  And he’s grumpy.  A lot. 

He can’t help it, really.  He lost his sense of humor when he lost his eye, I think.  That or he confused it for a walker and put an axe in its head.  You never can tell with Carl.

He does a good job, though, don’t get me wrong.  He’s always taken care of me.  He’s always been a good big brother.  He does right by us, usually.  He’s done a decent job these last few years, anyway.

**How long has Carl been your leader?**

Oh, probably five years now—he took over when Amy was still pretty young. 

**Why?**

It’d been happening for years, really.  As Carl got older and stronger Dad got older and more tired.  Dad just couldn’t— _be,_ anymore.  Being the leader was killing him. 

**So your brother took his place.**

They don’t call him the Young Lion for nothing, you know.  Carl’s just as brave and tough as my dad.  After it—after people started to see that Dad couldn’t run things anymore, just about everyone thought that Carl was the clear choice to step up.

**What do they call you?**

Me?  Judy, mostly. 

[ _She grins._ ]

But I guess you’re smarter than that, huh?  If Dad’s the Lionheart, Mom’s the Lioness, and my big brother’s the Young Lion, then I must be someone too, right?

**I didn’t mean—**

Nah, don’t worry about it, I’m just kidding.  They call me a lot of things.  Sim—Simba—is a pretty popular one, especially with Uncle Glenn and Aunt Maggie.  Dunno why—something about an old movie?  Dad had his own name for me.  And some of the people, especially the new ones, call me Liontooth.  I’m not sure why on that one either—I don’t have lion’s teeth.

[ _She grins again, laughing._ ]

**Do you have any idea?**

Oh, lots.  Dad used to say that people named us because it made them feel safe.  If someone named Liontooth is coming after you, you’re gonna run like hell.  So when they named us, they thought we’d scare their enemies away. 

Our people named my brother the Young Lion by the time he was fifteen.  I was Liontooth by the time I was eight.  Have you met my younger brother Dale yet?  He got his name, the White Lion—‘cause his hair is so blonde it literally glows in the dark, makes night hunting awful, let me tell you—when he was seven.

Everything was different then. We were at war for a very long time.  Everybody knew how to fight as soon as they knew how to walk.  Me, Dale, Amy, all of our cousins.  If you didn’t know how to fight and there was a raid, you could watch your family be murdered in front of you. 

**Do you remember the Governor’s last attack on the Lion’s Den?**

[ _She rests a hand on her stomach._ ] 

Yeah.  Well, bits of it.  I was still pretty young.  I dunno if Amy was even born yet—if she was, she’dve been just a tiny baby. 

I don’t remember Dad coming in.  Carl says he came in screaming, trying to get everybody up and awake, but I don’t remember it.  I remember Dad picking me up, though, just scooping me up and taking me upstairs. 

I remember he said, “Stay up here and be good for Grandpa Hershel and Aunt Carol, okay?  Be good, take care of your little brother.  It’s gonna get really loud and scary but no matter what, don’t leave this cell.  Don’t let your brother leave this cell.”

“I love you,” he said.

He was right.  It was loud and scary.  I’d heard the walkers before—all of us had, they were everywhere, so I knew what they sounded like, but this was—this was different.

I heard people I knew and loved screaming.  I watched Grandpa fall down the stairs.  I heard Aunt Maggie screaming for Uncle Glenn.  The really little kids started crying.  Dale started wailing.  I remember looking down and seeing Dad.  He was a mess.  Blood everywhere, bleeding all over the place.  Roaring his throat raw. 

[ _She stops for a minute._ ]

I didn’t see him for two weeks after that night.  I didn’t know what death was back then.  I didn’t know why I couldn’t see my Uncle Glenn or my Grandpa anymore.  I didn’t know why Mom was so scared. 

They thought Dad had died, you see.  He had been pretty messed up, and in the confusion he’d disappeared.  Just walked off.  He did that sometimes. 

Mom found him eventually, in the darker corners of the prison.  It took her days to get him back to us.  But he hugged me as soon as he came back.  He was sick as a dog, all feverish and shaking—he never walked quite right after that night—but he hugged me.

Then he passed out.

[ _She smiles slightly._ ]

That was my dad.  He’d just go and go until he dropped.  He was good that way.  Stupid, too.  I remember one time, I was maybe ten, and we were all out hunting in the woods.  Dad had tripped earlier and knocked his head around a bit but insisted that he was just fine.

Me, him, and Uncle Daryl were coming up on this deer, this huge buck.  I haven’t since a deer that big since.  We were gonna have to wrestle it down—no bullets—so we were all split up, trying to hem it in. 

Dad gave the signal and went for it, but he moved too fast.  His concussion acted up and he passed out on the damn thing.  Just completely keeled over.  He got his arms around its neck and that was it.  The deer was so surprised it just kind of stood there with Dad hanging off its neck, out cold. 

We ended up letting it go because Uncle Daryl didn’t want to disturb Dad.  Dad was mortified.  I couldn’t look at him without laughing for weeks. 

[ _Her smile widens._ ] 

He tried so hard to make me laugh.  Me and everyone else—my siblings, the cousins, our people.  Dad loved kids.  He loved _us._ Even Dale.  Especially Dale.

**Dale is the Governor’s son, correct?**

[ _She shakes her head._ ]

No.  He might be the Governor’s _child_ —and we don’t even know that for sure, Mom would never talk about it—but he was Dad’s son.  Dad was the one who raised him.  Dad was the one who taught him how to be a man.  They don’t call him the White Wolf, you know.

**Is that what you called the Governor?  The Wolf?**

Sometimes.  We never did—Mom said that he had enough big, showy names.  His real name was Phillip.  She said we should call him that because he didn’t deserve our respect.  We had earned our names.  He hadn’t.

**How did you earn Liontooth?**

[ _She grins again._ ]

D’you know how to get rid of someone three times your size who’s got you by the hair?

[ _I shake my head._ ]

Bite ‘em.  Right here, in the fleshy bit between your finger and your thumb, see?  [ _She demonstrates._ ]  Makes full grown men cry like babies.  This one time, a few years after Woodbury, a few guys snuck into the prison without realizing what they were getting into.  They figured out real fast they were in way over their heads and thought that grabbing a pretty little hostage would get them out alive.

It didn’t.  I bit the fucker who had me like I was a walker and he was the first piece of meat I’d seen in weeks. 

He dropped me like I was on fire, let me tell you.  Started screaming about infection and disease and death.  Honestly, I barely even broke the skin.  My teeth were _tiny._ But it gave Dad enough time to get ahold of him, and from then on everyone called me Liontooth.

I had a _reputation._

[ _She laughs, and then sobers again._ ]

Came in handy a few years ago.  Remember when I said that _most_ people thought Carl would be a good replacement for dad?

**Yes.**

Well, that’s true, most people did think that.  He had the support of probably three-fourths of the Den. 

But the other fourth wasn’t so on board. 

They hadn’t liked Dad much either, or Mom, or any of us.  They thought we had too much power.  They thought my family was a bunch of liars and murderers.  They didn’t want Carl to take Dad’s place—they thought it’d be the start of a very long, very bad dynasty. 

There was a fight out in the fields.  They knew better than to try and get at us inside—too many people, most of them too loyal to my brother—so they tried to kill us out here. 

Carl had taken us, me and Amy, out here to talk in private.  He wanted to make sure we were okay, see. He was trying to be a good big brother. 

The traitors came at us through the corn.  They didn’t want to kill me and Amy—we were still too young to take over, they thought—but they probably would have if we hadn’t killed them first.

**You killed all of them?**

[ _She shrugs._ ]  The ones who attacked us, yeah.  Me and Amy had been trained since we could walk, and Carl was—is—something else.  You don’t want to get in his way. 

We got maybe twelve of the traitors that day.  Carl started hunting for the rest.  If he didn’t find all of them, the ones that were left never tried anything again.  They might not’ve liked my brother in charge, but it was better than being dead, or walker bait. 

After that, people started calling me Liontooth again.  It’s actually kind of annoying. 

**Why?**

Because we’re not at war anymore, you know?  Yeah, yeah, I’m still pretty proud of myself.  I did good that day.  I protected my family. 

But when people call us those names, they make it sound like we’re still fighting a war.  We aren’t.  We won.  We could forget all of that.  Not start over, we’re too far gone, but maybe—

[ _She stops herself._ ]

I don’t know.  That’s not my job, I guess.  But I’d still rather be called Judy or Sim, you know?  Carl’s name is Carl.  Shithead if you know him well enough. 

[ _She sighs._ ] 

How much do you know about my father?

**I know that his name was Rick Grimes, and they called him the Lionheart.  He led the Lion’s Den for twenty years.  He drove Woodbury out of their homes and broke the Governor’s back.  He was a fierce man, and a good leader.**

So you don’t know him much at all, huh?  Come with me. 

**I’m sorry?**

C’mon, I want to show you something!  You’d never be allowed to go by yourself—it’s as close to a sacred spot as we’ve got. 

It isn’t far, either. Right up here, actually, just turn down that hallway—yep!  Right here.

[ _There is a solemn-faced young man standing guard by the door leading out to the fields.  He has white-blond hair and broad shoulders.  He towers over both me and Judith._ ]

Dale!  [ _Judith grins, running to tackle-hug the man.  He smiles and hugs her back._ ] 

                DALE: Who’s this?  
                JUDITH:  Our friend the journalist, from up north.  I’m going to show her around outside. 

[ _The Governor’s son hesitates.  His eyes, unlike both Judith’s and Carl’s, are bright blue._ ]

                JUDITH: It’s okay, Dale. 

[ _He stands aside._ ]

                DALE: Be careful out there, Sim. It’s still pretty wet.   
                JUDITH:  We’ll be fine.  [ _To me._ ] C’mon, we don’t want Mr. Stoneface here to change his mind.

[ _As we pass, I think I hear Dale laughing._ ]

**What is this place?**

Our graveyard. 

[ _We step outside and the rain has stopped, though the earth is still damp.  Rain clings to the long, tall grass, soaking us in a matter of seconds._

_There are countless crosses dotting this particular field, surrounded by all sorts of tall, brittle grasses and wildly blooming flowers.  Some graves are marked with names, Bible verses cut deeply into the wind-worn wood.  Others are decorated with old mementos, half-rusted necklaces that sway gently in the breeze, tattered hats, a faded shirt draped over the old bones of a cross like a suit of armor._

_But other graves are anonymous.  They bear neither names nor affectionate mementos.  Their wooden arms are bare.  There are no flowers at their feet._

_Judy takes me past all of these, rows and rows of people like my parents, my neighbors, my friends, who fell to the bite or to sickness or just to exhaustion, to the terrible, sweet impulse to just close their eyes and go to sleep._

_The last row of cross markers is clearly the oldest.  The wood is warped, barely recognizable as a cross, except for a trio of crosses standing side by side.  The rightmost cross is dark, rich brown and only slightly worn around the edges, maybe five or six years old.  A wedding ring, a simple silver band, hangs around the middle._

_The name across the arms is_ ANDREA, THE LIONESS. 

 _The leftmost cross is ancient, the wood gone gray and spidery, leaning heavily to the center, and on it, in deep, shaking letters, it simply says_ MOM. 

_The middle cross is lighter-colored and does not lean at all.  It stands up straight among the grass, its feet littered with wild flowers._

_Judith smiles, pointing to the graves one by one._

_She points to the leftmost grave._ ]

My mother, Lori.   Carl moved her grave when I was really little—she used to be with the others.  She died with some of our people.  Uncle Glenn dug the graves himself.  Carl moved her over here a long time ago.  He wanted her to have space, I think, even though she’s not buried here. 

[ _She traces her fingers over the ancient wood._ ]

Carl still talks to her all the time. 

[ _Judy moves on, tapping the rightmost grave with a smile on her face._ ] 

My mom.  She died a few years before Dad did.  I wish you could’ve talked to her—she was something else.  She’dve helped you write the best damn book you’d ever seen. 

She was the last one to die of a walker bite.  Well, no, that’s not right—she’s the most recent one to die of a bite.  We haven’t had anyone bit since her.  It was stupid, really.  Just a stupid mistake. 

**What happened?**

They were out scouting, Mom, Uncle Daryl, and Aunt Maggie.  It was something they liked to do together—usually they had Dad with them too, you know, the original ones, but he was stuck here settling an argument and they left without him.  Didn’t take a map, or any guns or anything—they didn’t think they needed to.  We’ve been here for so long, we know the countryside like the back of our hands, down to the location of the last, shrinking walker herds.

But there were a few strays.  Snappers, we call ‘em, you know, the ones without any legs or whose legs don’t work anymore.  They drag themselves across the ground, don’t make much noise, and they’ll get you if you don’t hear ‘em coming. 

Mom didn’t hear it coming. 

It bit her on the leg first, right through her jeans.  That wouldn’t be too bad, we can take care of that, but it dragged her down and got her other places too, real fast.  Her hands, her stomach, her shoulder. 

She finally killed it, but it was—

[ _Judy stops, yanking her hand off the cross and shoving her hands into her pockets._ ]

It was too late, you know?  Too late.

Uncle Daryl and Aunt Maggie carried her back here.  She wouldn’t come inside the fence.  Wouldn’t let Dad go out, either.  She didn’t want him to get hurt. She didn’t want to hurt him. 

They sat together for a while, one on either side of the fence.  Dad held her hands through the links.  We all got to say goodbye, me and the kids.  Dad.  We waited until the sun went down, and then she killed herself.  Just—blew her brains out, leaning back so that she wouldn’t get any on Dad. 

I know I shouldn’t complain.  I lost my mom but at least I got to say goodbye.  I got to hold her hand and listen to her tell me that she loved me one last time.  A lot of the people here, kids especially, didn’t get that.  Dad didn’t get that with my mother, my birth mother.  We were—we were lucky.

**So Andrea just…made a mistake?**

[ _Judith smiles, eyes watering._ ]

Sounds weird, right?  The famous Lioness, letting a little snapper get the better of her.  I couldn’t believe it at first.  She’d faced down so much more than that before—herds of walkers, invaders, the fucking _Governor_ —and this was the thing that took her down?

She wasn’t as fast as she used to be, sure.  She couldn’t see as well.  She might not have heard it, the wind could’ve been too loud.  It’d been a hard winter for her—hard couple of seasons, actually.  She got sick in early fall and didn’t really get better. 

Dad didn’t even want her to go on that scouting trip.  She was feeling better but only by a little bit, he said.  She still wasn’t a hundred percent.

Mom had laughed him off.  She said—she said that she didn’t want to waste away inside the Den.  She wanted to be outside, to feel the sun and the wind and smell the trees again.  She said that she would be fine. She wanted to go out again, before she got worse. 

**And then she died.**

And then she died.  Dad never really got over it.  He’d lost so many people already, see.  He’d lost his friends and his family and people just kept leaving him.  Every time he lost someone, he lost a bit of himself.  Carl and Uncle Daryl told you about the losing time thing, right?

**The fugue?**

Yeah, that.  Dad called it losing time.  Said it was like going to sleep and waking up in a different year—he’d go under and when he’d come back, whole days had gone by.  Mom was really the only one who could bring him out of it.  She—held him down, he used to say.  She tied him to us, to this world, when all he wanted to do was float away.  She kept the earth below his feet.

Every time we lost someone, it got harder and harder for her to bring him back.  He lost more and more time. 

And then Mom died—and then she died and my dad didn’t have that anchor anymore.  We would lose him for weeks, sometimes.  Months.  He would just go away and not come back.

About a month after Mom died, Carl stepped up.  Dad had been under for twenty-six days and we didn’t—we didn’t know if he was coming back.  For all we knew, we had lost both parents that day. 

**So Carl took his place as the Lionheart?**

No, not the Lionheart, never.  Dad _was_ our heart, you know?  He was the blood and beat of this place.  Carl could never be that.  He didn’t _want_ to be that.  I had to push him to take over.  I argued with him for days.  I said it was time, that we couldn’t know if Dad was ever coming back.  People were getting scared.  They were panicking.  Carl—they needed a leader.

And Carl’s not the Lionheart, but they call him the Young Lion for a reason.  He’s a good guy.  Once he took over officially, people started calming down.  The Den settled again. 

And Dad came back a few weeks later, just woke up out here.  He came limping in one morning.  He was a wreck, but he was—he was himself, and he held me that day, me and my sister and brothers, just held us, like we were babies again, you know?

I’d never seen him like that. 

After, it was just downhill.  He’d go away, just disappear into the Den or the woods or something.  We wouldn’t see him for days.  He came back to check on things—make sure Carl was running the Den okay, check on Amy, make sure Dale was behaving, come and visit me—and then he’d be gone again.

Everybody pretended his death was a surprise.  Like we woke up one morning and found him hanging from the ceiling, or something. 

That’s not true.  We woke up and he was just gone.  For good, this time.  His room—his and Mom’s room—was all cleared out.  All of Dad’s books and clothes were packed neatly away.  The books he left in the library.  The clothes he took with him. 

Everything else was gone—we’re still finding bits and pieces of him around, his favorite coffee cup, his beat-up notebook, that damn watch he was always winding up.  His machete he gave to Carl.  His gun he left to me. 

**So he just left?**

[ _She nods, rubbing her stomach thoughtfully._ ]

Just up and left in the night, you know?  Without a sound, if you ask the people around here.  Like a ghost.  He just faded through the walls, never to be seen again. 

Stories are funny that way, I guess.  They have a way of being fantastic.  People still say they see the old Lionheart prowling the woods at night, trailing after them when they go on patrol.  My cousin Hershel swears up and down that the Lionheart’s ghost saved his life one night when he was outside the fence.  He’d fallen pretty badly, gone down a nasty ravine, and he would’ve—should’ve—drowned. 

But someone pulled him out of the water and carried him nearly all the way back here.  We found him in the morning, banged up to hell and back, but alive. 

He swears it was Dad.

**How do you know it wasn’t?  How do you know he isn’t alive somewhere, just waiting patiently to die?**

[ _She smiles again._ ]

‘s a good story, isn’t it?  The immortal Lionheart, watching out for us.  Some people think he’s a ghost, some people think he’s still alive, but everybody thinks he’s still watching out for us.  Still protecting us.

**Is he?**

[ _Judith pauses, hand pressed flat against her growing belly._ ]

My dad’s dead, you know. 

**How do you know?  He left without a word, right?**

[ _Her smile turns sly, and a little sad._ ]

That’s how the story goes. 

**So what’s the real story, then?  What’s the truth?**

The truth?  I don’t know.  Does anybody?  You guys in the North have all kinds of technology and safety and chances to look at this thing, but do you know the truth? 

Why did this happen?  Why the walker virus, why here, why now?  Why was the bite so fatal?  Why did some people just wake up one day and decide, _I can’t do this anymore?_

Dad used to say—he used to say that there wasn’t a truth.  No such thing.  It was just a bunch of stories people told each other to feel better. 

So when he died, people told each other stories to deal with it.  Hell, it took a year before we even put up a grave, everyone was so sure he was coming back.  He’d wander in a little beat up, a little older, but he’d still be back with a hug for the kids and something kind to say to the grown-ups. 

People thought—still think, really—that he’s out there somewhere, just counting down time, or that even if he is dead he’s still taking care of us somehow.  Making sure we haven’t lost our way. 

But the truth—well.  The _fact_ is, my dad is dead.  He died five years, two weeks, and two days ago.  Here, actually.  Inside the fence.  Not too far from the guard tower.

**How do you know?**

I was there. 

**You were with your father when he died?**

Yeah. 

**Why?**

Why do you think?  I _knew._ He had my siblings fooled.  He had Aunt Maggie and Uncle Daryl and all the cousins fooled.  He had the whole Lion’s Den convinced that he was okay, that he was doing fine, that he wasn’t so tired he was just going to go under one day and never come back, but I _knew._

**Knew what?**

That he was dying.  Carl and Dad didn’t have the best relationship, near the end—fought like cats and dogs, actually, different styles of leadership and all that—and Dale didn’t want to see it.  And he would never show Amy.  He wouldn’t let her see how sick he was, towards the end. 

But I saw. He tried to hide it from me, I think, but—I don’t know, I’m a little weird.  I notice things.  And I know my dad.  This was the man who had held me in his arms when I scraped my knees or when a walker got too close to the fence.  He was the one who sang me lullabies.  Who told me stories when I couldn’t sleep. 

I knew him.  I knew when he was happy, or sad, or angry.  Or sick.

And he was really, really sick.  I don’t know with what.  Mom was sick for a long time, with one of those lingering sicknesses you used to hear about in the Before days. 

**Cancer.**

Maybe.  Dad wasn’t sick like that—it was a quick thing.  It took a few weeks, maybe, to take over.  He stopped losing time in big blocks, but he still lost it in little pieces, all day long.  He didn’t know where he was.  He kept talking to people who weren’t there.  He stopped sleeping.  Stopped eating, too.  He hid it well from everybody else, but I saw. 

I started to keep an eye on him.  It only seemed right, you know?  Dad spent twenty years looking after me—it was my turn to take care of him.  I tried.  I really did.  I was the one who sang to him, who read him books to help him sleep.  I got him to eat whenever I could. 

It wasn’t enough.

I heard him moving around, the night he left.  He was just gonna walk out—just walk into the woods and die, you know, like lions do in the wild.  He didn’t want to be a burden to anyone.  He didn’t want to cause us any more worry.

I caught him in Block C.  We don’t live there anymore—we moved to nicer places years ago—but he was there pacing around, saying goodbye to everyone.

**Everyone?**

You know, everyone.  Grandpa and Uncle Glenn and my mother.  Everybody we ever lost in there.  He was saying goodbye, and I _knew_ —

He caught me watching him.  He smiled.  “Hey, Jude,” he said.  That was his name for me—everybody else called me Judy or Simba or Sim, like that old movie, something about a baby lion?  I never got it, but Uncle Glenn gave it to me and it stuck—but Dad always called me Jude.  That was the lullaby he used to sing.  “Wagon Wheel” for Amy, “Bridge Over Troubled Water” for Dale, “Hey Jude” for me.  Cute, right?

[ _She rubs her stomach again, methodically._ ]

“Hey, Jude,” he said, and we walked together through all the old, empty hallways.  My daddy knew his way around the Den.  He knew where to go to be unseen. 

He told me everything. 

He was very sick, he said.  He was very tired.  He just wanted to slip out and away before he lost time for good.  Before he died here, among us, and ripped us all apart. 

He just wanted us—me—to forget him.  “It’d be easier,” he told me. 

[ _The corner of her mouth ticks up._ ]

I told him, “Fuck you, like hell I’m gonna forget you.”

He laughed. 

I think we understood, then.  We understood each other perfectly.  That was me and Dad—we understood each other.  And I knew, and he knew, that this would be the last time we talked to each other. 

We didn’t say anything. 

We just walked, through the Den, past everybody sleeping, out into the fields.  Dad stopped at each grave out here to say goodbye.  I remember the moon was so high that night, it made all the silver in his hair white.  He looked so old. 

We stood here, right here, and then he told me that he didn’t want to wander the woods until he died.  He didn’t want to become a walker.  He might find his way back here and hurt somebody.  He couldn’t bear it if he hurt somebody. 

I understood.  You might not—you had to spend a lot of time with Dad to know what he was really thinking, to know what he meant whenever he spoke.  He sucked at communicating, did you know that?  Couldn’t share his thoughts for shit.  He’d try, but he’d end up tripping over himself, getting all messed up and tangled.  It used to make Mom laugh, when she wasn’t too mad about it. 

But I knew.

My dad had this gun, this old Python.  It was old even before the dead came back.  Dad said that his was made in 1957.  It was his own daddy’s first gun.  He inherited it from his father when he turned eighteen. 

We still didn’t have many bullets.  Mom had figured out how to make them and she taught others, but after a while we stopped fighting off rival groups.  The walkers started to die off.  We didn’t need bullets. 

Dad only had two bullets left in his Python.  One for the walker that finally got him and one for himself, he used to joke.  Not funny, right?

Anyway, he had two bullets. 

[ _She pulls a long-barreled handgun from the waistband of her jeans.  The grip is made of wood.  The muzzle is burnished silver.  She flips open the chamber.  One single, dull gray bullet sits snugly in its place._ ]

Carl never bothered to learn how to use this.  When he was younger it was too heavy.  When he was a little older, we didn’t have any ammo.  By the time he was grown up he was pretty comfortable with his weapons of choice.  So when Dad died, he got the machete.

I got the Python.  When Mom started making bullets again Dad taught me how to shoot with it.  I was almost as good a shot as he was.

[ _She grins._ ] 

He died and I kept it.  Something’s gotta stay in the family, you know?  My nephew Shane’ll probably end up with the machete.  I think I’m gonna give Lori the hat as soon as she stops chewing on everything. 

But the Python, well. 

[ _Judith smiles at me, resting her hand on her belly again._ ]

You can write whatever you wanna write about my dad.  He was fierce.  He was strong.  He was cruel, sometimes.  He ruined a lot of people’s lives.  He was good at that.  If you pissed him off or threatened his family, he’d rip you apart. 

He was crazy, too.  By the end he was talking to dead people and flying into fugues every ten minutes.  He was dangerous.  He _was_ a lion.  He was everything that meant. 

But he was my dad.  I want you to write that down, okay?  He was my dad.  He was Carl’s dad and Amy’s dad and Dale’s dad.  He was an uncle and a brother and a friend.  He loved us.  He loved us so much.  He got carried away, sometimes.  He was ruthless when I was a kid.    He killed people. 

But he was a good father.   Maybe not the best, but he tried _so hard_ for us.  He tried so hard.  When you tell his story to the world, you’ll add that, right?  You’ll tell everyone that he tried?

[ _Wordless, I nod_.]

Good.  Don’t look so sad!  You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something.  It’s not a sad story, I promise.

 **Are you sure?** [ _I gesture at the field around us, at the crosses rising out of the tall grass._ ]  **It sure ends with a lot of dead people.**

[ _She laughs again._ ]  That’s one way to look at it, I guess.  A little morbid, but most people would agree with you.

**You don’t?**

[ _She grins._ ]  C’mere.  [ _She holds her hand out, guiding my own to the smooth wood marking Rick Grimes’ resting place.  The wood is damp from the rain, but warm from the growing sunshine.  Carved deep into the beam in tiny, precise letters, I can feel a few words._

 _1 COR 15:26_ ]

My dad wasn’t religious.  Some of our people are.  I personally don’t know what to think.  I don’t know if there’s a life after this one.  If there is, I hope it’s better.  I hope it doesn’t hurt like this one does.

But Uncle Daryl always says, _all stories come from somewhere._ There’s gotta be something to give people the idea. 

And people say they’ve seen the Lionheart.  My cousin says Dad saved his life.  I saw my father die, but who knows?  Maybe the Lionheart’s still alive somewhere, just waiting for the right moment to come back.

[ _She smiles again, resting her hand on her belly._ ]  It’s a nice thought.

**What will you name your child?**

[ _Judith laughs._ ]  Oh, I’ve got a lot of names picked out.   I really like Sarah, and Talia, and Lucy and Lizzie and Andrea.  Maybe Zack for a boy, or Alexander.

[ _Together we start to walk back across the fields through the rows and rows of crosses.  The prison doesn’t look nearly so ugly now, crouched among miles of barbed wire and corn.  I think I see what the Lionheart must’ve seen in it, the first time he saw it after eight months in the wilderness._

_I think I see what his family saw in it, what his people continue to see in it even though the dead are mostly gone and I’m sure there are plenty of safe places now._

_It looks hopeful._ ]

But, [ _Judy says, and she’s laughing again, a bright, sunny laugh that she must’ve inherited from her father._ ]  I’ve always liked the sound of Ricky. 

 

 

“The last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death.”  -1 Corinthians 15:26, _The Holy Bible, New International Version_   


End file.
